Live Beautifully

Abercrombie and Fitch (A&F) clothing gets a bum rap a lot of the time as clothing for mainstream zombies, but they actually have high quality fabrics, wearable designs, and a certain relaxed attitude toward partial nudity in advertising. (I’m willing to overlook that last part.)

One of the best things about shopping at A&F is that their clothing occasionally goes on sale, at nice discounts at that. Unfortunately A&F is also one of those high inventory turnaround stores where you may have to buy an item at full price if you really like it and want it in a particular size. (I made the mistake once of passing over a cute coduroy A&F jacket while waiting for a sale, and ended up having to scour eBay for one in my size, only to discover the wide world of eBay Abercrombie knockoffs.)

Where was I? Oh, yes. $12.90 jeans!So, I somehow ended up entirely randomly inside an A&F store yesterday, and happened to see that they were having a sale, as usual, on a few items, including select jeans. While I had vowed never to purchase still-expensive sale-priced A&F jeans, I remembered how all my jeans have gotten loose and a little saggy lately. So I decided to just try on some jeans – purely for kicks.

Voila! I came away with a comfortable, well-fitting, and flattering pair of stretch, subtly distressed, dark denim jeans (that I will eventually hem), and proceeded to checkout with the vague notion that they were on sale for about $39.99. Slightly embarrassed at buying $40 jeans when I remembered having gotten $25 Levi’s on sale last year, I was shocked to discover that these fancy-pants A&F jeans rang up as only $12.90 (down from $79.50).

$12.90 for a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch jeans. Wow!

Excited to show off my new, super-cheap, well-fitting jeans, I expected the response to be quite positive. In fact, the response was a positively amused, “But, those jeans are ripped!”